Revaluing Pots: Wanigela Women and Regional Exchange

The women of Wanigela are known throughout Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea (PNG), for making cooking pots (baitab nokwat) that are exchanged widely within the region.¹ The clay pots have a distinctive design: as a minimum, a series of applied lines arranged in undulating patterns located around the rim or, more extensively, over the body of the pot, depending on its type.Baitab nokwat, the form used in exchanges, characteristically carry incised designs on the body with the applied wavy line motif confined to the rim. In the past, girls would have grown up watching their mothers skilfully manipulate the